I am an English Language Fellow providing teacher training workshops and feedback to teachers in Kyrgyzstan so as to make their classes more interactive and fun.
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Saturday, November 24, 2012

November 24, 2012

Made my way to the Children’s Library wondering if Gulsham,
the teacher who had repeatedly invited me to her village, would come today so
we could go there immediately after the Forum session was over. Asel was ready
to do her presentation on the proper way to issue instructions in the classroom,
but she spoke so softly we could barely hear her much less make any sense of
what she wanted us to do. Willoughby was present as well as Joel who would
conduct a presentation on classroom management later on, which turned out to be
quite lively even when the register was way too high for those present.

Willoughby informed me the Peace Corps staff was holding a
potluck dinner that same afternoon and she wanted to bring me along to
introduce me to the rest of the volunteers in the area. Since Gulsham had not
shown up by 11:15, I agreed to go with her, but then at 11:30 she showed up and
tried to excuse herself by saying she had overslept.

While I felt bad that she had made the one hour trip
probably just to fulfill her promise, I had to be the bearer of bad news and
let her know I had made another commitment in her absence. The minute I said
that, she turned around and left the room. I hope to make it up to her in the
future.

There was a meeting of the Forum staff members, and even
though I was starving, I stayed alongside Willoughby to discuss the creation of
yet another committee to handle the day to day affairs of the organization now
that Gulnara is stepping away gradually from those duties. We agreed to hold a
conversation club for the teachers so as to increase their fluency level to be
run by Willoughby and I along with other Peace Corps volunteers in the area.
The first one will be held December 22 and will be all about Christmas.

We finally took a trolley to the Peace Corps education
coordinator’s flat and Willoughby held on tight to my arm while navigating the
icy sidewalks as she confessed she had fallen twice already and was grateful
not to have suffered any injuries so far. We walked to the sixth floor of a
somewhat modern building and found the volunteers busily carving one of three turkeys
and putting the trimmings on the tables.

The country director, who also served in Nepal, showed me
photos of his recent trip there contrasting them to the ones he had taken 30
years ago. I was surprised to hear he had outsourced all of his photos and
negatives to a company in India to have them scanned, cleaned up and retouched by
professionals as it was so much cheaper than in the States.

I was introduced to the stout, red-headed Judson, the
volunteer who had stood me up twice at Lingua after offering to help me with
the newsletter format. He pretended not to know who I was and then finally
relented and claimed he thought Matthew had agreed to help me with it. What a
liar! I made no effort to speak to him during the gathering at all.

The turkey was the usual dried up, tasteless, and colorless
business I had experienced so many times in the past. I feasted instead on the delicious
mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin soup, roasted vegetables and a somewhat dry
cornbread. There was a table laden only with desserts and I loved the pumpkin
pie and bread pudding with a persimmon sauce someone had concocted. An apple
crisp was way too sweet for me and the ice cream didn’t appeal to my senses
being completely white, but not in the coconut ice cream way I’m used to.

I saw no coffee or tea anywhere and couldn’t conceive of
eating all those desserts without a shot of coffee at some point. I asked the coordinator,
Bill, about it and he offered to take me to his flat upstairs to make some just
for us as he knew the rest of the volunteers were only onto chai. He had the
same type of coffeemaker I do, albeit a more expensive contraption, and best of
all, gas for cooking.

We discussed the pending booklet we are expected to
collaborate on and agreed to so after the Christmas break when he’ll be back
from the States and I’ll have some time before starting the next round of
teacher training workshops. The coffee was superb and I bid everyone goodbye as
I wanted to walk home before it got too dark. Seth was able to pull my
coordinates on his cell phone and I found myself about 5-6 blocks from my
apartment.

I watched the movie, “The Secret Garden”, based on a
children’s book I have failed to read and didn’t find it engrossing, believable
or even appealing based on the beautiful images of the English countryside. I’ll
hold my final judgment until I get to read the book one of these days.